Globalism and the Ground Beneath Your Feet

For an interesting case study in globalism and city bureaucracy, check out the New York Times article on the foundry in West Bengal that produces many of the manholes in New York City. It will be interesting to see what the effect of this publicity will be on the city's policies and on the workers at the foundry itself.

New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection gets most of its sewer manhole covers from India. When asked in an e-mail message about the department’s source of covers, Mark Daly, director of communications for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, said that state law requires the city to buy the lowest-priced products available that fit its specifications.

Mr. Daly said the law forbids the city from excluding companies based on where a product is manufactured.

Municipalities and utility companies often buy their manhole covers through middlemen who contract with foreign foundries; New York City buys the sewer covers through a company in Flushing, Queens.

Con Edison said it did not plan to cancel any of its contracts with Shakti after seeing the photographs, though it has been phasing out Indian-made manhole covers for several years because of changes in design specifications.

Manhole covers manufactured in India can be anywhere from 20 to 60 percent cheaper than those made in the United States, said Alfred Spada, the editor and publisher of Modern Casting magazine and the spokesman for the American Foundry Society. Workers at foundries in India are paid the equivalent of a few dollars a day, while foundry workers in the United States earn about $25 an hour.

The men making New York City’s manhole covers seemed proud of their work and pleased to be photographed doing it. The production manager at the Shakti Industries factory, A. Ahmed, was enthusiastic about the photographer’s visit, and gave a full tour of the facilities, stopping to measure the temperature of the molten metal — some 1,400 degrees Centigrade, or more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Big Ideas in Politics: Charles Rangel on the Tax Bill, Barney Frank on the Subprime Crisis

Rangel, the Democratic Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Frank, the Democratic Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, talk to Charlie Rose about the tax bill, the subprime crisis, and the upcoming Presidential election.

Big Ideas in Politics: Populism as a Competitive Strategy in the Iowa Democratic Caucus

Populism is back this Presidential election, on the right and the left. Check out this analysis of the risks and strategies of Edwards' populist campaign and its current approach: attacking rival Hillary Clinton while playing nice with Barack Obama.

Big Ideas in Politics: "Heroic Conservatism" Michael Gerson on the Future of the Republican Party

Leonard Lopate of WNYC just had on an interesting interview with President Bush's former speechwriter, Michael Gerson, on the future of the Republican Party.

Here's the official description from the Leonard Lopate show:

President George W. Bush’s former speechwriter, Michael J. Gerson, shares his vision for the Republic party. He says the party must adopt what he calls "heroic conservatism" with more focus on promoting human rights and ending poverty. Gerson’s new book is Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don't).

You can listen to the segment on line here.

RSVP for Friday Nov. 30: Ice Skating in Bryant Park and Nicholas Kristof at the NYPL

It's time to RSVP for an event coming up on the last day of this month:

Nicholas Kristof will be speaking at the New York Public Library on the genocide in Darfur and the difficulties of covering such stories in the US media. Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for the New York Times and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, once for his reporting on the Tiananmen Square Democracy movement, and a second time for his coverage of Darfur.

The event will take place on a Friday night, so afterwards we're planning to walk down the steps of library into Bryant Park to go ice skating. The outdoor rink (which is being sponsored by Citi) would make an interesting case study for the kind of programs we were discussing last night - programs designed to bring happiness to the people.

Time: 7:00 pm Friday, November 30
Place: New York Public Library at Bryant Park

RSVP with me, at Eric.Ozawa at NYU.edu by Wednesday Nov. 22.

The Pursuit of Happiness: A Follow-up to Last Night's Meeting

Prompted by Eduardo Porter's provocative Op-Ed in the Times, we had an interesting discussion last night about money, happiness, and good government (that also touched on the Italian Constitution, Paris Plage, free tacos, the Best Town in America, the Sophia Coppola Syndrome, and Britney Spears' decision to shave her head).

Here's the opening of the essay for those who missed it (and the pizza from Lombardi's):

The framers of the Declaration of Independence evidently believed that happiness could be achieved, putting its pursuit up there alongside the unalienable rights to life and liberty. Though governments since then have seen life and liberty as deserving of vigorous protection, for all the public policies aimed at increasing economic growth, people have been left to sort out their happiness.

This is an unfortunate omission. Despite all the wealth we have accumulated — increased life expectancy, central heating, plasma TVs and venti-white-chocolate-mocha Frappuccinos — true happiness has lagged our prosperity. As Bobby Kennedy said in a speech at the University of Kansas in March 1968, the nation’s gross national product measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile.”

The era of laissez-faire happiness might be coming to an end. Some prominent economists and psychologists are looking into ways to measure happiness to draw it into the public policy realm. Thirty years from now, reducing unhappiness could become another target of policy, like cutting poverty.

More here.

Follow Up: Strange Culture in the News

Last week, we got together with the Philostream to talk about the questions raised by Lynn Hershman Leeson's film Strange Culture. We were fortunate to have the artist Gregory
Sholette there with us to discuss the details of the film and to fill us in on what has happened to the Steve Kurtz's case since the film was released.

You can listen to a radio story from NPR's All Things Considered on the film here (thanks, Allie). You can also read an article in the Nation on the film, and find out more about the Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund.

Last Week's Event: Fright Night with n+1: Environmentalism and The Politics of Fear

You can check out a summary in the Times of the debate on fear and environmentalism that we attended at the New York Public Library on Tuesday last week, the day before Halloween. The starting point for the debate was Alex Gourevitch's provocative argument:

Environmentalism is not just some politics. It’s a political project, a full-bodied ideology, and one that presents itself in terms of progress and aspiration. But when you look at what this ideology is built on, it’s built on the idea that a collective threat that makes security the basic principle of politics and makes the struggle for survival the basic and central aim of our social and political life. This, to me, is not a progressive politics at all.

You can read the full text of this attack on Environmentalism from the Left on the website of the journal n+1.

Big Ideas Event: Patriot Act vs. Freedom of Expression vs. Genetically-engineered Food

The new documentary film, Strange Culture, is a perfect storm of the big ideas we've been thinking about this semester:

• the Legacies of September 11th (the Patriot Act, War on Terror, Dept of Homeland Security and the places where the new approach to security comes into conflict with freedom),
• the Recent Renaissance in the way we think about the food we eat (new and old ideas, such as Localism and Farmer's Markets, genetic engineering, , the movement to reorient the farm bill away from agrobusiness 'monocultures', the omnipresence of corn.
  

In cooperation with Olivier Berthe and the Philosophy Stream, we'll be watching this unsettling and provocative documentary in the company of one of the artists from the Critical Art Ensemble featured in the film. A discussion of the Big Ideas at stake in the film (and the Federal court case it investigates) will follow.

The event will take place THIS MONDAY, November 5: 6:30 - 8:30 pm. Palladium Residence Hall (on E. 14th Street, between 3rd Ave. and 4th Ave.) in Seminar B (Third Floor near the Multi-purpose room).

Come one, come all. Invite your friends.

I'd like to urge especially those who have missed a lot of our events to come to this event.

Please send me a quick email (Eric.Ozawa at Nyu) to let me that I can expect you.